Summer is in full swing in Texas. We wake up to a balmy 80 degrees, then move up to the mid to high 90s later in the day at about 50% humidity on a good day. I check the balcony garden almost daily. As this is my first balcony garden, the developments continue to amaze me.
The tomato plants in the Topsy Turvy planter continue to bear fruit. Although I did notice the tomatoes are much smaller for the mid summer harvest, but they are just as tasty. I suspect the heat and humidity are causing the fruit to mature at a much faster rate. The netting I placed around the plants are holding up well, and no birds have eaten any of the tomatoes.
The zucchini plants are flowering quite actively, but I have yet to see actual zucchini growing. The flowers just dry up and fall off. This could be because of high humidity or poor pollination due to lack of bees or butterflies.
The mint plants are growing taller but the leaves are quite small; flowers are now turning to seed.
The basil and rosemary plants are doing well. Other herbs like parsley and green onion are still alive,
The jalapeno and bell pepper plants got flooded in the planter when the tropical storm hit a couple of weeks ago; the pot did not drain well. I moved the pot to another location to see if they improve. The stevia seeds that I planted did not grow at all, but I heard that these seeds don’t thrive in the heat, so I will have to try again in the fall.
I feel lucky we have not had too many bugs in the balcony garden, except for a few mosquitoes. Too avoid getting mosquitoes in the house and attacking the family, I do not go out in the early morning hours, or too late in the day when the mosquitoes are abuzz.
With this week’s “garden bounty” I was actually able to make bruschetta using a day old french baguette that got hard and crunchy. I mixed five chopped tomatoes with chopped basil and parsley leaves, a clove of garlic and olive oil.
The Apartment Prepper's Blog 
Congrats on your gardening success! We’ve had lots of luck with cucumber plants in our apartment gardens.
I believe we’re just north of you in the Houston area. Not sure how much Basil you have, but make sure you’re pruning it every 7 days or so and it should produce for you until it starts to get cold. Also, you can sprout lots of additional plants by placing cuttings in a cup of water for a 7-10 days. We are big basil pesto eaters and have found we need 12 plants to product enough pesto for a meal. Planted 50 plants from seed this year and we’ve been freezing lots of pesto from the winter months.
Keep at it as it’s taken us 3 years of trial and error to start to figure much of this stuff out-with lots more learning required.
Nice to meet a neighbor. 🙂 I only have about 5 plants, so not enough for pesto. I will try growing from cuttings now that you’ve told me about it. Thanks for the great advice!